| | | | After Trudeau's Win, Will Canada Grow More Divided? | | Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has won reelection with a minority government, The Economist writes that Canada's political divide could grow wider. Conservative-dominated Western Canada feels more and more isolated, and with Trudeau needing the support of new partners on the left in order to govern, a leftward tilt may deepen the rift, the magazine writes.
Jen Gerson calls his performance "anemic" in a New York Times op-ed: Once positioned as a giant in Canadian politics, Trudeau's status has been shaken. Scandals took a toll, Gerson writes: Trudeau's past donning of blackface revealed erstwhile cluelessness, while his alleged scale-tipping in a corruption investigation undermined transparency. But it's also true that the world has changed since Trudeau took office; formerly one half of a "bromance" with President Barack Obama, Trudeau now manages a fraught US relationship and a contentious trade landscape.
Looking to future elections, Gerson asks: "[I]f you were a Canadian voter suddenly troubled by such uncertainty, honestly, is this the guy you would pick again?" | | Afghanistan: The Other Withdrawal Conundrum | | Syria isn't the only withdrawal conundrum the US faces. In a Foreign Affairs essay, Carter Malkasian argues that if the US pulls out of Afghanistan without a favorable agreement with the Taliban, Americans will need to accept a greater risk of terrorist attacks. In the absence of US air support for Afghan forces, the Taliban is likely to retake much of the country, if not Kabul itself, Malkasian writes.
That will mean a new territorial base for al Qaeda—which could mean more attacks. ("The period when ISIS held the most territory coincided with 35 ISIS-linked attacks in Europe and the United States, which killed or injured roughly 2,000 people," Malkasian writes.) The US won't have to worry as much about ISIS, a Taliban enemy, but the free rein of al Qaeda may leave the US with no choice but to seek greater resilience against terrorist attacks, with less ability to disrupt al Qaeda on the ground. | | In recent days, Santiago has been consumed by violent demonstrations, arson, and looting, after a plan to hike public-transit fares touched off the unrest. That's all the more surprising, given that Chile has been a model of economic success and stability in Latin America: Its GDP per capita of over $15,000 in 2018 was topped only by Uruguay in South America and beat the overall figure for Latin America and the Caribbean by $6,000, according to World Bank data; as Jeffrey Sachs points out in a Project Syndicate op-ed, Santiago is one of Latin America's wealthiest cities, and a 2019 World Economic Forum report ranked Chile as the world's 33rd most competitive economy, Latin America's best.
Why, then, would a fare hike spark chaos? The answer is inequality, Sachs writes. Despite its success, Chile has the most drastic income inequality in the OECD, the organization of 36 of the world's most advanced economies. As in Paris and Hong Kong, unrest can follow unpopular policies even in successful economies, if wealth isn't distributed evenly, Sachs notes. Unlike some left-leaning countries in the region, Chile adopted a successful, market-capitalist system and prospered as a result, as John Authers writes for Bloomberg, but as the Financial Times argues in an editorial, it needs to find a way to make that success more inclusive.
Chile should serve as a warning to other countries, Bloomberg's Authers writes, listing some other factors to look out for, like the lack of a populist movement to channel anger, an economy that relies too much on a commodity (in this case, copper), and the unpopularity of suddenly announced policies like rate hikes, fuel taxes, and subsidy cuts. "If it can happen in Santiago, it could happen anywhere," Authers warns. | | The Kurds' Democratic 'Experiment' Is Under Attack | | After the murder of 35-year-old Syrian Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, for which Amnesty International has blamed an armed group backed by Turkey, Rosa Burc writes for The New York Times that "Ms. Khalaf embodied the kind of society the people in Rojava, the autonomous enclave in northern Syria imagined and fought for since 2012."
Stateless since the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Kurds have been beset by attacks in Iraq (where Saddam Hussein killed 5,000 in a gas attack in 1988), Turkey, and Syria, Burc writes. But amid the chaos of Syria's war, northern Syria has witnessed a "Kurdish experiment in democratic self-governance." ("It is an attempt at self-determination," Burc writes, stressing uniquely democratic aims: "The Kurds in northern Syria did not seek the establishment of an ethnic nation-state." A Times Magazine headline in 2015 heralded "A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS' Backyard.") The Turkish incursion that has followed America's withdrawal, Burc writes, is a continuation of the ethnic suppression Kurds have long faced—and a threat to something promising. | | | | | | |
